Christopher Newport University's Medieval and Early Modern Studies Blog

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MRST Courses Spring 2021

on November 11, 2020

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Medieval an Renaissance Studies course listing poster

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Courtly Love: The Strange Medieval Influence Upon Contemporary Romance

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Courtly Love: The Strange Medieval Influence Upon Contemporary Romance By Eric Silverman In today’s world, most people want a loving, romantic, long-term exclusive relationship, and eventually marriage and family. But, here’s the strange thing: the model for love, sex, and romance most of us inherit/intuit comes from combining a mix of disparate sources that actually don’t fit very together very well. Today we’ll focus on one of the fascinating sources that subtly shapes our romantic sensibilities to show why it is in tension with some of our other relational goals. Courtly love was a relational phenomenon amongst the upper classes in Europe from roughly the eleventh to fourteenth century. It was a model for relationships that gave women more choice and power in relationships than many previous models. It is one of the original models for relationships where interpersonal romantic-sexual relationships could oc

Summer 2023: Faculty Update!

Photograph by Sharon M. Rowley© Greetings all! We’re looking forward to getting this blog back on track, and what better way than faculty news? Dr. Jessica Apolloni , CNU English has recently published: “ ‘A Night of Errors:’ Chaos, Comedy, and Comparative Law at the Inns of Court,” in Law, Culture and the Humanities. (2022). Dr. Charlotte Cartwright , CNU History, organized two sessions for the 58th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University: “Medieval Lincoln” and “Tapestries, Prosopography, Names, and Vases: In Memory of George Beech,” with Amy Livingstone for Medieval People and the Medieval Studies Research Group, Univ. of Lincoln. Dr. Sarah Finley , CNU Spanish, is a fellow at the Helmerich Center for American Studies Dr. Finley has also recently published: “ ‘¿Enseñar Música a un Ángel?’: The Countess of Villaumbrosa as Sor Juana’s Musical Patron in Romance 21.” . Revista de Estudios Hispánicos. Volume, 56. Issue, 1. (2022). Pages, 29

Why study pre-modern anything?

CNU's Medieval and Renaissance Studies program is a small, interdisciplinary minor that students tend to discover kind of late in their university careers. There's often a class here, a class there, and then students realize they've met most of the requirements -- AND that they're really enjoying their classes in History, Theater, Philosophy, and Art History, among others. In order to promote our minor at the start of this year, I've been thinking about why I have enjoyed learning and teaching about the pre-modern world for decades. I also started looking around at other programs online to see if their websites talk about why we study the Middle Ages, or early Modern Period, or even the ancient world, and I've seen several references to the broader -- and important -- academic and transferrable skills students learn when they study in the humanities or engage in interdisciplinary studies: critical thinking, cultural awareness, the ability to research and write

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